No Witness But the Moon

by Suzanne Chazin

  Chapter 6

  Vega crept out of Adele’s bed on Saturday morning as the first light broke the sky. He slipped back into his clothes, which looked even worse in daylight. His blue button-down shirt was wrinkled and sour smelling. His dark khaki pants were snagged and muddy at the cuffs. He kept spare clothes in his pickup truck but it was still parked in the county police lot.

  He hadn’t slept at all. He felt like he had crystal meth running through his veins. A hot shower didn’t help. He stayed under the blast an extralong time but his body still thrummed like a tuning fork. He kept whipsawing between two wildly different states of mind. In one, he was racked with guilt and shame at the thought that he’d killed Marcela’s father, an unarmed man with no criminal record. In the other, he felt a burning frustration that a potential witness—or even, God forbid, his mother’s murderer—had died by Vega’s own hand before he could question him in her death.

  Adele had insisted it was just a coincidence. “A lot of the restaurant help live in the Bronx. The rents are cheaper. You don’t even know if your mother and Marcela’s father lived in the building at the same time.”

  All true. And yet Vega couldn’t make himself buy it. He didn’t believe in coincidences. He did believe in irony, however. There was a hell of a lot of irony to his having killed off his best lead.

  He shoved his wallet, phone, Swiss army knife, and truck keys back into his pants pockets. That’s when it hit him: he didn’t have his truck. He’d have to fetch it from work. If he called a cab, Adele could sleep in this morning. He stepped softly into the upstairs hallway and turned on his iPhone. He’d walk Diablo before he left, but for the moment, he just wanted to concentrate on his own situation.

  His screen lit up. There were over a hundred messages.

  Not good. Not good at all.

  The smart thing to do would be to dial a cab company and stay away from the Internet but Vega had a sense he needed to know what was going on. He opened a search engine and typed Wickford, NY, shooting. A Pandora’s box of misery flashed across the screen.

  Right away he knew he was in trouble. Although Vega’s department hadn’t formally released his name yet, the activist, Ruben Tate-Rivera, had somehow gotten hold of it. Worse, Tate had put Vega on his Wall of Shame, along with Vega’s incredibly unflattering departmental photo. Vega had lifted his chin too high and blinked at the wrong time so he had a brutish look in the picture. His coloring was washed out too so he looked much whiter than he did in real life. Beneath the bad photo was his name: James O. Vega. The O was for “Orlando,” his father—the only part of the man that stuck around. The middle initial gave Vega’s name a Gaelic lilt. Great. Just what I need. I’m now a brutish, white-looking Irish cop. A perfect image for all his new Internet fans.

  Vega scrolled through the copy on Tate’s website. There was almost no mention of Ricardo Luis who’d mistakenly led dispatch to believe Marcela’s father was armed in the first place. Instead, Tate told readers that the shooting happened in Wickford, NY, one of the wealthiest towns in the United States. It identified the dishwasher as Hector Mauricio Ponce-Fernandez (where the name “Antonio” or the Atlanta connection came from on his other ID was anyone’s guess). It went on to describe Ponce as a married father of two young boys with a steady work history and no criminal record. Vega’s stomach tightened to read about the boys, ages twelve and fourteen. Vega couldn’t believe he’d robbed them of their dad.

  But his guilt was quickly replaced by rage as he read on. Tate mentioned that Vega, a detective with eighteen years on the force, had shot Ponce four times and that some of the shots had been delivered to the head, execution-style.

  Whoa. Hold on. Was Tate seriously suggesting to his almost one million website followers that Vega had executed the man? Here, Vega was forbidden to speak about the shooting, and this media gadfly who hadn’t even been there was making unfounded accusations and turning him into a coast-to-coast whipping boy for all that was wrong with the police.

  People were buying it, too. On Twitter, Vega’s name suddenly popped up under hashtags like #handsupdontshoot, #killercops, #immigrantlivesmatter, and a hashtag created exclusively for him: #shotforaphoto. Under each was a torrent of hate mail:

  I hope they lock up his sorry ass and throw away the key. . . .

  Wait until he sees what happens to cops in prison....

  If I could do to him what he did to that dishwasher and get away with it, I would....

  He better never meet ME in a dark alley. . . .

  He’s gonna NEED a gun after this....

  Vega felt like he was going to explode from all the hurt and anger inside of him. He wanted so badly to punch something—anything—to get the rage out. But he didn’t want to make any noise and wake Adele. She didn’t deserve to be dragged through this. Their original plan had been to take Sophia to pick out a Christmas tree this morning at Our Lady of Sorrows Catholic Church in town. But Vega couldn’t imagine doing anything so normal. Instead, he scribbled a quick note of explanation and left it by Adele’s bedside. He hoped she’d understand. He didn’t write what he was really thinking—what he didn’t yet want to acknowledge. The kindest thing he could do right now was to leave and never come back. They’d been together only eight months. She didn’t deserve to sacrifice a decade of hard work because of his two seconds of bad choices.

  In the kitchen, Diablo greeted him warmly, jumping up for a scratch, dancing around the back door to go out. The cab could wait. Vega fetched the leash off a hook in the mudroom and attached it to Diablo’s collar.

  “Come on, pal. Let’s take a walk.”

  It was a cold December morning. The air felt like peppermint in his lungs. Pale rays of sun lit up the hard frost on car windshields up and down Adele’s street. Somewhere down the road, Vega heard an engine humming and the sharp sound of an ice scraper across glass.

  Diablo was all good cheer as he trotted down the sidewalk, his tail and ears turned up on alert, sniffing every fire hydrant like he’d never before encountered such a thing of beauty. Vega had to fight with him a little to get him to heel but overall, the dog seemed comfortable with him. They soon developed a rhythm. While they walked, Vega pulled out his cell phone and checked his messages. They were multiplying like a virus. From friends. From fellow cops. Everyone wanted to talk to him about the one thing he couldn’t talk about.

  Vega was halfway to the next corner when Diablo began turning in circles behind a leafless sycamore and arching his back. Too late, Vega realized that he’d forgotten to bring a baggie to pick up after the dog. That was all he needed: to get Adele in trouble with her neighbors. He had to hope the dog would just be quick about it.

  No such luck. Vega could hear the soft purr of a car engine slowly pulling alongside him as Diablo finished his business. Vega turned, ready to plead with some annoyed homeowner. He recognized the white Buick as soon as it pulled to the curb. The driver’s door opened and a familiar figure hefted himself out from behind the wheel. A weak shaft of sunlight caught the top of the man’s bald head as he frowned at Vega over the roof of his car. The man bent down and rummaged through a cellophane package for something. When he emerged again, he had a stick of red licorice in his gloved hand. He bit off a piece and chewed loudly.

  “I’d ticket you, Vega. But I think you’ve got enough troubles already.”

  Diablo strained at his leash, jumping and whining until Lake Holly Detective Louis Greco walked around to the curb and gave the animal a scratch. “Is this a therapy dog?” Greco eyed the steaming pile of fresh doggie doo next to the tree. “Or are you just offering up a public statement on your current predicament?”

  “So you’ve heard.”

  “The whole freakin’ country’s heard thanks to that mail-order professor with the Orville Redenbacher bowties. How he gets this shit so quickly, I’ll never know. I got a friend on the Bronx detectives’ squad who called me as soon as it went viral. Seems the perp you shot was from his neck of the woods.” Greco sh
oved the rest of the licorice stick in his mouth. He rubbed two gloved hands the size of baseball mitts together. Everything about Greco was big. His wide, jowly face. His gut. His opinions. He delivered the last with gusto.

  “I figured maybe Ruben Race-Hysteria would give you a pass, you being Puerto Rican and all. But I guess being a cop trumps every other allegiance. That’s probably the one thing that media whore and I can agree on.”

  “Glad to hear you two are in such cozy agreement,” Vega said dryly. He wasn’t in the mood to hear Greco’s take on Ruben Tate-Rivera, the shooting, or the state of police work in the United States today. Besides, he already knew what they’d be. He and Greco had worked a few cases together over the past year and although Vega had initially been put off by the man’s gruffness, he’d come to like and respect him. Even so, Louis Greco was a townie cop nearing retirement. His whole career had been spent in tiny Lake Holly handling small-time burglaries, car accidents, drug arrests, and domestic abuse complaints. The most deadly thing Louis Greco had probably ever done in his entire career was eat the two-week-old leftover potato salad at the back of the station house refrigerator.

  Diablo tugged on his leash. “I’ve gotta get going,” said Vega.

  “I’m not out here looking for jaywalkers, you dope. I came to find you. Adele told me you and the dog had both taken off so I figured, follow the fire hydrants.”

  “I can’t talk, Grec. Not to you. Not to anybody.”

  “I know that.” Greco opened his front passenger door. “But Adele tells me your truck’s in the county police lot and you need a ride to fetch it. Hop in. We’ll drop the Poop King at her house and head over.”

  “That’s not necessary.”

  “Consider me a taxi service.”

  “Look, I appreciate the offer,” said Vega. “But I’d rather be on my own right now.”

  “Bad idea, buddy.”

  Couldn’t this guy take a hint? “Listen, Grec,” said Vega. “I know you mean well. But you’ve got no idea what I’m going through right now. And don’t hand me that ‘thin blue line’ shit.”

  Greco was a head taller than Vega. He stared down at him. His eyes got dark and deadly serious. “You tried to drink yourself to sleep last night and it didn’t work, did it? Next you’ll start popping Ambiens like they’re breath mints. They won’t work either. That little film inside your head will just keep playing until making a cup of coffee feels like too much mental effort. You’ll explode at everything and anything. Your relationships will fall apart. Friends will start to back off—or you’ll back off, thinking everyone’s better off without you. By the time they hand you back your service weapon, you’ll start thinking that’s just about the neatest and easiest solution. One bullet—no more pain.”

  Vega blinked at Greco. There was only one way he could know all that.

  “How come you never—?”

  “Like you said: How could anyone understand?” Greco rapped a knuckle against the open door. “Get in.”

  Greco kept the pearl-gray brushed velour interior of his Buick spotless. Vega was sure he had it detailed once a month. Which made Vega all the more embarrassed when Diablo licked the rear windows and muddied the seat with his paw prints.

  “Sorry,” said Vega after they dropped Diablo back at Adele’s. “I owe you for a car cleaning.”

  “I’ll put it on your tab.”

  Greco nosed the car along the highway, following the train tracks that zigzagged south through the county. They breezed past small, picturesque villages where nothing stood taller than the church steeples. All around them were bare gray trees and rolling hills dotted with deer and flocks of wild turkeys. The sun was trying to break through. The day looked far too promising for Vega’s mood. His cell phone dinged. He took it out of his pocket and frowned as he scrolled through text messages and emails he had no intention of answering.

  “Ah, social media,” said Greco. “You can’t take a leak these days without the whole world commenting on it. That was one thing, thank God, I never had to deal with.”

  “When did it happen?”

  “Four years after I came on the job.” Greco dug into his open bag of Twizzlers and pulled another out. He didn’t offer Vega one. They both knew Vega would call it sugar-coated wire insulation and pretty soon Greco would be ribbing Vega about all the fried food Puerto Ricans eat and Vega would be countering that Italians couldn’t eat anything not smothered in garlic, tomato sauce, and cheese. Working a case with a partner was a bit like being married. After a while you knew everything about the other person.

  Or maybe you just thought you did.

  “It was a domestic disturbance call,” said Greco. “Sunday morning, February 27. That date will forever be etched into my brain. Me and my partner, Bryan Kelly—he’s long retired now—we got dispatched to this nice, tidy little cape house over on Cliffdale Street. A seventeen-year-old girl had called nine-one-one to report that her twenty-year-old brother was holding a meat cleaver to their mother’s throat.” Greco shook his head. “For as long as I live, I will never forget that young man’s face.”

  Greco went to take a bite of the licorice then changed his mind and stuffed it back into the bag. He’d lost his appetite. Vega could relate. He hadn’t eaten more than a few bites since the shooting.

  “Me and Kelly, we both tried to talk the kid into putting down the cleaver. Kelly—he’s a veteran cop—he tries to distract the kid so I can get in a little closer and maybe disarm him. But the kid sees what we’re about to do. He turns the blade from his mother and lunges at me. To this day, I keep wondering why I didn’t just step back. Why did I shoot?”

  “Because he could have killed you,” said Vega.

  “Yeah, well—you die a little anyway. I suspect you’re already learning that by now. You’re still in the denial stage, I imagine.”

  “The what?”

  Greco pointed through the windshield to a red-tailed hawk hovering overhead. “Isn’t that just the most beautiful creature? I swear I never get tired of watching hawks fly. All that beauty just so they can swoop down and kill something. Pierce it right through the heart. Oh yeah,” Greco suddenly remembered. “The denial stage. You ever heard of the five stages of grief?”

  “No.”

  “By the time you’re finished with counseling you will.” Greco ticked them off on his gloved fingers: “Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Anyway, the first is denial.”

  “I’m not in denial, Dr. Freud,” said Vega. “I know I killed a man.”

  “Yeah, but right now you’re itching to prove to yourself and anyone who will listen that you did the right thing.”

  “I didn’t have a choice.”

  “I know that, Vega. So does every cop out there. But you’re looking for someone to absolve you. Like it never happened. That’s what I mean by denial. You’re not ready to accept that good intentions can still have bad consequences.”

  Vega found himself watching the hawk now. That magnificent wingspan, the way it just hovered above the earth on currents of air. Vega wished he could be above everything right now, just floating. “I never wanted to be this sort of cop.”

  “You think any police officer does?” asked Greco. “I’ve been doing this since you were having wet dreams, Vega. And sure, there are some cops who shouldn’t be cops. They’ve got too much temper in them. They’re too nervous under pressure. They see people as categories instead of individuals. But I’ve never yet met a cop who took this job because he wanted to kill people.”

  They were both silent after that. They’d worked two whole murder investigations together before this and they’d probably exchanged fewer words than they had this morning in Greco’s Buick. Vega’s cell phone dinged with more messages. More bad news. He was developing a Pavlovian response to his phone. Each ding made him queasy. He turned his face to the side window and tried to concentrate on the shafts of weak sunlight raking the bare trees. There was no yellow to the light this time of year. I
t was all gray and white, like the clouds that hovered so low they seemed like distant mountains.

  “The man I shot?” said Vega. “Turns out he lived in the same building as my mother—the same building she was murdered in.”

  “Here we go again with the denial,” said Greco.

  “How is that denial?”

  “You’re hoping like hell you can fix your conscience by painting this guy as a murderer—your mother’s murderer, no less. It ain’t gonna happen, Vega. The NYPD’s been all over your mother’s case. If there were some connection, they’d have found it by now. All you’re gonna do is alienate people.”

  “Like I’m not alienating them now, huh? You see the Internet this morning? I’m being compared to the Gestapo.”

  “It’s going to get bad for a while, I’m afraid,” said Greco. “That’s where stage two—the anger—comes in. Everybody’s Monday-morning quarterbacking you. Colleagues. Superiors. The media.” He grinned. “Ruben Tweets-his-errors.”

  Vega allowed a smile.

  “Meanwhile,” said Greco, “your department’s distancing itself from the whole mess. The victim’s family is filing suit. It starts to feel like the entire world is running its mouth off while you’re just standing there with your thumb up your ass, a bystander to your own life. The only people you’ll have to take your anger and frustration out on are the people you love. But you do that”—Greco wagged a finger at him—“and it’s over, my friend. You’ll lose every significant connection in your life. Believe me, Joanna and I came close to divorcing during this period. It’s going to be even harder for you and Adele. She’ll be under pressure to distance herself from you.”

  Vega slumped in his seat. “She probably should. This will kill her career.”

  “Why you couldn’t just date a nice nurse or schoolteacher, I’ll never know.”

  “I’ve got a thousand good reasons.” Vega shrugged. “But if you were to reverse the question and ask how come she’s with me? I can’t think of one. And that was before this.”